Hooks
The hook is the fragment you take with you when you get out of the car. It is defined by what it does, not by where it sits, which means a hook is not the same thing as a chorus and a song can have several at once.
- defined by effect
- often rhythm
- repetition is the engine
Where you run into this
- Pop
- Dance
- Advertising
- Hip hop
- Songwriting
In short
The standard definition is functional: a musical idea, often a short riff, passage or phrase, that catches the ear and makes a song appealing. Two things follow that are regularly misunderstood. A hook is not automatically the chorus, and it is not necessarily sung. A bass figure, a synth stab or a drum pattern can be the hook, and often is.
Repetition is not a trick applied on top of a hook, it is the mechanism itself. Work on musical repetition estimates that people spend well over ninety percent of their listening time with music they have heard before. That is about whole pieces rather than single phrases, so treat it as context rather than proof, but the direction is not in doubt: familiarity is most of what makes something feel good to hear again.
How it works
The hook is more often rhythm than melody. Strip a famous hook to a single pitch and you can still recognise most of them, because the rhythmic figure carries the identity. Keep the pitches and change the rhythm and recognition disappears. That is worth knowing before you spend an afternoon on the notes.
Where you run into this
- A four-note figure you can sing after one listen
- An instrumental riff that is more memorable than the vocal
- A phrase that stops one note early and makes you want to finish it
Our own examples
Three of our own loops: one that resolves and leaves you alone, one that does not, and the same shape flattened to a single pitch so you can hear how much of the hook was actually rhythm. On earworm research we report the sample: the largest study to date collected earworms from around three thousand people and matched a hundred frequently named tunes against a hundred that were never named, controlling for popularity.